looking for best video card for mpeg 1 and mpeg 2 capturing

[frostyRRR]

I want to input a anolog input and if possible a digital input (external DVD) into my pc and capture the file as a mpeg 1 and mpeg 2 file. I have a 450 mhz processor and have 128 ram. I recently looked into the Ads USB instant DVD unit( a way to convert directly to mpeg 1 in real time) but found it calls for a video card of 16mb. or more and my old ati AIW video card in only 8mb, thierfor it appears I need to get a new video card and wonder where to start? thanks Frosty

[Mirror_Image]

Do you have a rough, "not-to-exceed" price in mind? Just like car shopping, it's good to determine the heft of your wallet before you begin, especially when you request recommendations for the "best" of anything.

[oldfart13]

The ADS IDVD doesn't do a good job of capping in Mpeg-1. Best to get a straight Mpeg-1 encoder instead. If it's Mpeg-2 though, the ADS can do that okay. I'm having trouble getting it to cap with video and audio in sync but since the cap software (other than Visual Studio 5) is still in Beta (CapWiz) things like that will be ironed out in the next little while. You have therefore 2 choices:

1) Cap in native Mpeg-1 or Mpeg-2 (but editing in Mpeg-2 is a bitch) with Mpeg encoders.

2) Cap in DV or AVI with Cap cards or DV encoder cards (or DV cameras and firewire ports) and put up with the long encoding times. My PIII 1GHz takes 14 hours to convert 1 hour of DV AVI. Your specs are much worse than mine so you'll have to get a more powerful comp if you want to go that route. Regular AVI is a possibility with cap cards like the ATI All In Wonder line. The 7500 will work in 98, 98SE and Me, while the 8500 only works in XP.

Interesting choices, no?

[pharlap]

ati radeon 8500 +

[sparky12]

I use the USB Instant DVD and it works pretty well capturing to SVCD. However, when I capture on the DVD settings (3, 4, & 5 Mbts), I can't open the file in TMPGenc. I get an error (corrupted or unsupported file format error). Otherwise, the results look pretty good when I encode down to VCD to burn with NERO.

sparky
sparky12757762@yahoo.com

[marcusaxavier]

My 32MB ATI AIW hasn't let me down, yet. Although, if you can get 64MB+ for PCI slots, let me know. Btw, do you have an AGP slot, or just PCI? If just PCI, try the 32MB AIW, it sells for abotu $200 new.

[SHS]

You may want look at WinTV-PVR or Dazzel DVC2 or ProVideo PV-256 there Hardware MPEG Capture card unlike the ATI AIW which is is base on soft codec.

[fakesky]

Im satisfied with my SVCD captures
using wintv PVR. I mean if I would use avi + CCE 100pass Im sure it would look better, but you cant deny the beauty
of hitting record and then when youre done just burn to a svcd disc.
Making a svcd out of a 1h movie or whatever
takes like 1h 15 minutes, where 10 is burning and 5 is making it svcd compilant.